Two Can Play

Viola Bowen has landed an extraordinary professional opportunity: she gets to help design a video game based on the book series she loves most. The catch is her co-lead, Jesse F-ing Andrews, the colleague who has become her sworn enemy. Jesse has spent years making it clear that he wants nothing to do with Viola, and she still cannot understand what prompted his hostility. Their creative partnership is already uncomfortable before their bosses send them on a winter team-building retreat.

A remote mountain lodge, heavy snowfall, and Jesse occupying the room next door are nearly Viola’s idea of a nightmare. With the two of them cut off from their usual routines, though, the antagonism begins to reveal complications neither of them has faced openly. Viola starts to see that Jesse is more layered than she assumed, while the friction between them takes on a distinctly physical charge. Their shared work, old assumptions, and unresolved attraction push the relationship in a new direction, raising the question of whether two people who have spent years at odds can create something together—or allow themselves to want more.